by K. Bromberg
He stares at me, tumult in his eyes and uncertainty in his grimace. “Ry … ” My name is an exhale on his lips as he tries to find the words to express the warring emotions dancing at a rapid pace through his irises.
“Why’d you get them?” I ask, thinking maybe I’ll switch gears, anything to get rid of the fear flickering in them.
“I figured I was scarred permanently on the inside—live with it every day, a constant reminder that never goes away—I might as well scar myself on the outside too.” He shifts his eyes away from mine with a deep breath and looks out toward the ocean. “Show everyone that sometimes what you think is a perfect package is filled with nothing but damaged goods, scarred and irreparable.” His voice breaks on the last word and with it so does a little piece of my heart. His words are like acid eating at my soul.
I can’t stand the sadness that overtakes him so I take the reins. I want him to see that whatever the tattoos represent, it doesn’t matter. Show him that only he could take what he deems an invisible disfigurement and make it visibly, beautiful art. Explain to him that the scars inside and out are meaningless because it’s the man that wears them—owns them—who is important. Is the man I’ve fallen in love with.
And I’m not sure how to show him this, so I move on instinct, touching his arm so he raises it up. I very slowly lean forward and press my lips to the uppermost one, the Celtic symbol representing adversity. I feel his chest vibrate beneath my lips as he tries to control the rush of emotion swamping him when I move ever so slowly down to the next one: acceptance.
The notion that anyone should ever have to scar themselves permanently to accept horrors I can’t even fathom hits me hard. I leave my lips pressed against the artistic reminder and close my eyes so he doesn’t see the tears pooling in them. So he doesn’t mistake them for pity. But then I realize I want him to see them. I want him to know that his pain is my pain. His shame is my shame. His adversity is my adversity. His struggle is my struggle.
That he no longer has to battle it alone, body and soul stained in silent shame.
As I lift my lips from the symbol of acceptance and move it down to healing, I look up at him through my tear blurred eyes. His eyes lock on to mine and I try to pour everything in myself into our visual conversation.
I accept you, I tell him.
All of you.
The broken parts.
The bent parts.
The ones filled with shame.
The cracks where hope seeps through.
The little boy cowering in fear and the grown man still suffocating in his shadow.
The demons that haunt.
Your will to survive.
And your spirit that fights.
Every single part of you is what I love.
What I accept.
What I want to help heal.
I swear neither of us breathe in this silent exchange, but I can feel walls crumbling down around the heart that beats just beneath my lips. Gates that once protected are now forced apart from the rays of hope, love, and the trust breaking through. Walls collapsing to let someone else in for the first time.
The absolute impact of the moment causes the tears to fall over and trail down my cheek. The salt on my lips, his scent in my nose, and the thunder of his heart breaks me apart and puts me back together in a magnitude of ways.
He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting the tears, and before he opens them, he’s reaching down and pulling me up so we’re at eye level. I can see the muscles in his jaw tic and see the fight over how to verbalize it in his eyes. We sit like this a moment as I allow him the space he needs.
“I …” he starts out and then his voices fades, lowering his eyes for a beat before raising them back up to mine. “I’m not ready to talk about it yet. It’s just too much and as much as it’s clear in my head—in my soul and my nightmares—saying it out loud when I never have, is just …”
My heart splinters for the man I love. Fucking shatters into the tiniest shards possible from the memories that just put that lost, apologetic, shameful look in his beautiful eyes. I reach out and cup his jaw in my hands trying to smooth away the pain etched in the magnificent lines of the face.
“Shh, it’s okay, Colton. You don’t need to explain anything.” I lean in and press a kiss to the tip of his nose as he does to me and then rest my forehead against his. “Just know I’m here for you if you ever want to.”
He exhales out a shaky sigh and pulls me tighter against him, trying to make me feel secure and safe when I should be doing that for him. “I know,” he murmurs into the darkening night. “I know.”
And it’s not lost on me that he let me kiss all of his tattoos—express love for all of the symbols of his life—except for the one denoting vengeance.
“Motherfucker!”
Where the fuck am I? I jerk awake and sit up. My heart’s racing, head’s pounding, and I’m out of fucking breath. Sweat beads on my skin as I try to wrap my head around the jumbled images floating, then crashing through my dreams. Memories that vanish like fucking ghosts the minute I wake up and leave nothing but an acrid taste in my mouth.
Yeah, the two us—nightmares and me—we’re tight. Thick as motherfucking thieves.
I glance at the clock. It’s only seven-thirty in the morning, and I need a drink already—screw that—a whole fucking fifth to deal with these goddamn dreams that are going to be the death of me. Talk about motherfucking irony. Memories of a crash I can’t fucking remember are going to kill me trying to remember them.
Can you say fucked up with a capital F?
I laugh out loud only to be answered by the thumping of Baxter’s tail against his cushion on the floor beside me. I pat the bed for him to jump up on it, and after a bit of petting, I wrestle him to lie down, laughing at his wildly licking tongue.
I lie back on my pillow and close my eyes trying to remember what the fuck I was dreaming about, what empty spaces in my mind I can try and fill. Absolutely fucking nothing.
Sweet Jesus! Throw me a goddamn bone here.
Baxter groans beside me. I open my eyes and look over at him, expecting puppy dog eyes begging for attention. Nope. Not in the slightest. I can’t help but laugh.
Fucking Baxter. Man’s best friend and shit and also comedic relief when needed most.
“Seriously, dude? If I could lick myself like that, I wouldn’t need a woman.” My words don’t even make him hesitate as he finishes cleaning himself. After a beat Baxter stops and looks at me, head angled, handy tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. “Don’t give me that smug look, you bastard. You might think you’re top dog now with all that flexibility and shit, but, dude, you’d hold out too for Ry’s pussy. Fucking grade A voodoo, Bax.” I reach out and scratch the top of his head and laugh again with a shake of my head.
Am I that fucking desperate that I’m talking to my dog about sex? And the doc says my head’s not fucked up? Shit, I think he’s taken one too many right turns on an oval track.
Baxter stands and jumps off the bed. “I get it, use me and then leave me,” I say to him, and Rylee’s words to me the first night we met resurface. Fuck ’em and chuck ’em. Fucking Rylee. Pure class, gorgeous as fuck with a defiant mouth and feisty attitude. How the fuck did we get from there to here?
I swear to God life is a fucking series of moments. Some unexpected. Most not. And very few inconsequential. Fuck if I would have ever expected a stolen kiss to lead to this. Rylee and me.
Motherfucking checkered flags and shit.
Blowing out a breath as the headache starts, I roll over on the bed to grab my pain meds from the nightstand. It feels like my head explodes with a bright burst of white—a flash of memories from the drivers’ meeting hits me like a fucking sledgehammer—and then disappears before I can hold on to more than a tenth of what flickered.
“Goddammit!” I shove up and out of the bed, the dizziness not as bad as yesterday. As the day before yesterday. I feel restless as I try to force myself to remember,
to make my fucked up head recall all that I’d just glimpsed. I pace, my mind drawing nothing but fucking blanks. I’m frustrated, feeling fucking confined, unsettled.
More fucked up than not.
I don’t feel like me anymore. And I need that right now more than fucking anything. To be me. To be in control. To be on top of my fucking game.
To still be Colton fucking Donavan.
“Aaarrrrggghh!” I shout because fucking is most definitely what I need right now. What will help me find the fucking me I need to be again. I may be pacing in front of my bedroom window, but my dick is hard as a rock and my balls are so fucking blue I’m gonna turn into goddamn Papa Smurf if the doc doesn’t clear me soon.
Pleasure to bury the pain, my ass. When you can’t have the pleasure, what the fuck do you do with the pain?
And fuck me if it’s not the worst—sweetest—fucking torture sleeping next to the only woman I’ve ever ached for. I can’t take another damn day of this. Even though it aches like a bitch, just the thought of her has me reaching down to palm my dick, make sure it didn’t shrivel up and fall off from lack of fucking use.
Yep, still there.
And then my hand trembles. Shakes so that my fingers can’t even hold my own dick anymore.
Motherfuck, cocksuck! I’m fucking shaking with frustration right now. At me, at fucking Jameson for crashing into me, at the fucking world in general! This confinement is suffocating me. Making me lose my shit! I’m going fucking crazy!
I pick up the pillow next to me on the couch and chuck it at the wall of glass in front of me before flopping down into a chair. “Fuck!” Squeezing my eyes shut, I suddenly feel like images zoom and collide at a rapid pace slamming against the front of my mind. The bright flash of white returns with a vengeance, crippling and freezing me at the same fucking time.
Go, go, go. C’mon, one-three. C’mon, baby. Go, go, go.
Too fast.
Fuck!
Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman.
I jolt my eyes open as memories lost to me rush back in high definition color.
My stomach tumbles to my feet as the forgotten feelings hit me. Fear strangles me as I try to piece the crash together from the Swiss-cheese sized holes still in my memory.
The anxiety attack hits me at full force and I can’t shake it. Dizziness. Vertigo. Nausea. Fear. All four mix like a Long Island Iced Tea I’d kill to fucking gulp down right now as my body trembles with the tiny bits of knowledge my memory has chosen to return.
I feel like I’m on a roller coaster, mid free fall as I struggle to draw in a fucking breath.
Suck it up, Donavan. Quit being such a pussy! Fuck me because all I want right now is Rylee. And I can’t have her. So I rock myself back and forth like a goddamn puss to prevent myself from calling her on her first full day back with the boys.
But fuck if I don’t need her, especially because I get it now … get her now. Understand the claustrophobia that cripples her, because right now I can’t even function. All I can fucking do is lie flat on the floor with the edges of my vision blurring, the room spinning, and my head pounding.
And in a moment of lucidity amidst the strangling panic, my mind acknowledges that if I didn’t feel like myself before, then I most definitely hate this fucked-up pussified version of myself—falling to pieces, lying on the floor like a little bitch because of a few memories.
I close my eyes as my mind swims in a fucking fog.
… If it’s in the cards …
More memories graze my mind, but I can’t reach them or see them long enough to hold on to the fuckers.
… Your superheroes finally came …
I push the memories back, push them down into the blackness. I’m so fucking useless right now. As much as I need to remember, I’m not sure if I can handle them. I’ve always been a balls-to-the-wall kind of guy, but right now I need motherfucking baby steps. Crawl before you walk and all that shit.
I close my eyes to try and make the room stop the fucking Tilt-A-Whirl it’s become.
Thwack!
And another flash of a memory hits me. Five minutes ago I couldn’t remember shit and now I can’t fucking forget. Fuck being broken or bent, I’m a motherfucking scrap yard of parts right now.
Breathe, Donavan. Fucking breathe.
Thwack!
I’m alive. Whole. Present.
Thwack!
I take in a couple of deep breaths, sweat staining the carpet as it pours off of me. I struggle to sit up, to piece together the parts of me scattered all over the fucking place to no avail, because it’s gonna take a whole hell of a lot more than a torch to weld me back the fuck together.
And it hits me like a motherfucking freight train what I need to do right now. I’m on the move. If I were more coherent, I’d laugh at my naked ass crawling across the floor to reach the television’s remote, at how fucking low I’ve stooped.
But I don’t give a flying fuck because I’m so goddamn desperate.
To find myself again.
To control the one fear I can control.
To confront the memories and take their power away.
To not be a fucking victim.
Ever.
Again.
I reach the remote with more effort than it usually takes me to run my typical five miles, and I’ve only crawled ten fucking feet. I’m weak as fuck right now in so many ways I can’t even count them. I’m out of fucking breath and the jackhammer is back to work in my head. I finally reach my bed and I push myself on my ass so I can prop my back against the footboard.
Because it’s time I face one of the two fears that dominate my dreams.
I aim the remote at the television, push the button, and it sparks to life. It takes me a minute to focus, my eyes have trouble making my double vision merge. My fucking fingers are like Jell-O, and it takes me a few tries to hit the right buttons, to find the recording on the DVR.
It takes every fucking ounce of everything I have to watch my car slingshot into the smoke.
To not look away as Jameson’s car slams into mine. Lighting the short fuse on a fireworks display.
To remember to fucking breathe as it—the car, me—flies through the smoke-filled air.
To not cringe at the sickening sound and sight of me hitting the catch fence.
To watch the car shred to pieces.
Disintegrate around me.
Barrel roll like throwing a fucking Hot Wheels down the stairs.
And the only time I allow myself to look away is when I throw up.
Expectation vibrates and contentment flows through me as I drive the sun drenched highway back to Colton’s house, back to what I’ve been calling home for the past week. A silent tiptoe within a monumental step of our relationship.
It’s just out of necessity. Not because he wants me to stay with him for an unspecified period of time. Right?
My heart is lighter after spending my first twenty-four hour shift in over three weeks with the boys. I can’t help but smile, recalling Colton’s self-sacrifice to get me out of the house and to the boys without a paparazzi entourage. As I was behind the wheel of the Range Rover and its heavily tinted windows, Colton opened the gate on his driveway and walked right out into the media frenzy, drawing all of the attention on himself. And as the vultures descended, I drove out the other side and left without anybody tailing me.
Anticipation is not inconsequential. The phrase dances through my mind, a parade of possibilities rain from the four words Colton texted me earlier. And when I tried to call him to ask what he meant, the phone went to voicemail and another text was sent in response. No questions. I’m in control now. See you after work.
And the simple notion that after being with him basically non-stop for three weeks and now I’m not allowed to talk to him—that in itself has created serious anticipation. But the question stands, what exactly am I supposed to be anticipating? As much as my body has already decided, vibrating at what it knows to be the answer
, my mind is trying to prepare me for something else. I’m afraid that if I think he’s really been cleared by the doctor, and he hasn’t, I’ll be so frenzied with need and overwhelmed with desire that I’ll take what I want—am desperate to have—even though it’s not safe for him.
I can’t help but smile in satisfaction as I think of what tonight just might bring, on the heels of a great shift with the other men in my life. I felt like a rock star walking into The House from the warm and loving reception I received from the boys. I missed them so much and it was such a comforting sound to hear Ricky and Kyle bickering over who is the best baseball player, to hear the sweet sound of Zander’s voice in its sporadic but steady bouts, to listen to Shane rattle on about Sophia and Colton getting better so he can teach him how to drive. There were hugs and affirmations that Colton really is okay and all of the headlines in the papers saying otherwise were not true.
I turn up the radio when What I Needed comes on and start singing aloud, the lyrics bolstering my good mood, if that’s even possible. I look over my shoulder and change lanes, noticing the dark blue sedan for the third time. Maybe I didn’t escape the paparazzi after all. Or maybe it’s one of Sammy’s guys just making sure I get home okay. Regardless, I have a slightly unnerving feeling.
I start to get paranoid and reach for my phone to call Colton and ask him if he had Sammy put a security detail on me. I reach across to the passenger seat and my hand hits all of the homemade gifts the boys made for Colton. It’s then I realize that when I loaded my stuff into the back of the car, I set my phone down, and forgot to pick it back up.
I glance in my mirror again and try to shake the feeling away that eats at me, that makes me worry when I see the car still a few lengths back, and force myself to concentrate on the road. I tell myself it’s just a desperate photographer. Not a big deal. This is Colton’s territory, something he’s completely used to but not me. I blow out an audible breath as I make my way through the beachside community and onto Broadbeach Road.
